Thursday, March 30, 2006

I started using Peaches in my courses when I taught Queer Theory in Spring 2004, and I've subsequently used her and her music in my Popular Culture class (Spring 2005 and Spring 2006). I am currently writing a paper called "Back It Up Boys: Peaches Queers Straight Sex," which focuses on Peaches' song, "Back It Up Boys" (off of Fatherfucker) and the practice of pegging. Accordingly, I have been catching up on my reading about Peaches. I was checking out the archive of articles about Peaches on her website. There I found an article called "Peaches Brew" by John Walshe, published in HotPress (July 2004), and I came across this:

Aside completely from the righteous indignation she often arouses by asking her audiences to shake their dicks, Peaches has had a big impact on the fringes of popular culture. There are regular Peaches lookalike contests held in various parts of the US, and some of her lyrics are studied as part of university courses in Toronto and Arkansas.

Hawgblawg fans, those university courses in Arkansas would be my courses. How do I know? Well I told Peaches that I was using her songs in my classes when I met her in Austin in April 2004. (Here's the evidence that I have met her, in Memphis in October '03. Notice that she's wearing the same dress in the photo with me as she is wearing in the photo here, taken from an article in the Style Section of the New York Times, October 19, 2003.)

In her interviews, Peaches used to talk about how her lyrics were taught at the University of Toronto, now she has added Arkansas to her schtick. I'll keep looking for other evidence.

On another Peaches front, here's a report from the New York Times on her performance on March 20, at the Bring Em Home Now benefit.

Beyond all remonstrations, mild or pointed, lies Peaches, who chanted and rapped over a skinny electronic rhythm-track about sex as a cure for everything. This wasn't totally germane to the evening, but it was weirdly effective anyway; in the right light, sex can stand in for anything, including religion and political resistance.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Mish Maoul (Unbelievable) is the title of Natacha Atlas' new solo album, which goes on sale April 25. What is truly "mish maoul" about it is that her record company, Beggars Group, has put up a special website for the release, and you can listen, right now, to the entire album. I've listened to it just once so far, so I can't give a very detailed review, but I can say that it is well worth getting. I've loved every single one of Natacha's previous releases. Mish Maoul is a bit of a change from Natacha's last release, Something Dangerous, which registered the strong influence of Missy Elliott. This one has more of a basic Egyptian pop feel, less hip-hop, but nonetheless contemporary Egyptian pop, incorporating lots of styles, and doing them all very well. I really like "Hayati Inta," which has a very Moroccan feel, and uses the guimbri, the chief instrument of the Gnawa. "Ghanwah Bossanova" (Bossanova Song) is great too, as much lounge as bossa nova. I basically liked everything, and there is not a bad track (although I don't much like the short rap in English, at the opening of "La Lil Khowf" [No to Fear].) So give it a listen, or two, and then go out and buy it.

Abu Aardvark posted this segment from a report by Spencer Ackerman on Irbil, Kurdistan a few days ago, and I wanted to add some comments of my own about it. So here's what Abu A. excerpted:

The gas-hustlers have a comfort, though – chilly as it may be in the face of a security crackdown. Wafting through the airwaves and onto the streets of Irbil is an unlikely palliative speaking directly to the Kurdish imagination in this current moment of netherworldly nationhood: reggaetón. At precisely the right moment of national confusion, this hybrid confection of Jamaican dancehall reggae and Latin lyrical thuggishness is musing to northern Iraq about the liberating possibilities of gasolina. In a bizarre but tangible sense, the peshmergas' status as Irbil street bosses has competition from a San Juan rapper named Daddy Yankee.

Gasolina is Daddy Yankee's anthem, the track that earned him his crown as king of reggaetón and a 5,000-word profile in the New York Times Magazine. It's possible to hear the song three times a day over the radio in Irbil, probably more often than it appeared on the New York City FM dial at the height of its stateside ubiquity in 2005.

That's thanks largely to Radio Sawa, the much-derided brainchild of the United States broadcasting board of governors that mixes American pop and agitprop, which mainlines Gasolina directly to Irbil. The song is so popular in the city that a trip to the Happy Times restaurant and shisha lounge in the middle-class neighbourhood of Ainkawa is an invitation to a reggaetón barrage. On a typical evening, the restaurant's massive projector screen shows Daddy Yankee merrily waxing down a woman's shapely and barely-concealed derrière while patrons nod their heads and chew pizza.

Bemused incredulity over the popularity of reggaetón in Kurdistan is among the most telling indications of a first-time visitor.

It would be a stretch to say that the enthusiasm for Gasolina has to do with its subject matter, especially when considering its aggressive rhythm and near-pornographic video. But Daddy Yankee's signature track is a sexually-explicit ode to what gasolina can provide – and here "gasoline" can mean, as Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker, speed, rum, semen or gasoline – and that, of course, is unadulterated pleasure. And at the moment, as Iraq disintegrates, the Kurds are betting quite heavily on what gasoline can do for them.

Abu Aardvark comments, "at least Radio Sawa has had some impact on the Middle East...."

My comment concerns what I think gives Ackerman's report its zing: the apparent "weirdness" of Kurds in Irbil listening to reggaetón. I want to argue that this is not weird at all--except to us Americans who always seem to assume that "Easterners" are essentially different from us and inevitably more backward. We can imagine them drinking Coca-Cola, but not consuming the latest Western pop music craze, especially when they wear those strange headwraps and turbans.

The thing is, the Western mass media, in their various forms, have been around in the "East" ever since they were invented. Cinema shows up in Egypt very shortly after it does in the US. As for Latin music, Cuban music was a world-wide craze in the nineteen fifties. (Of course we know a lot more about its effects in the US and in Africa than we do about its impact on the Middle East.) For instance, a song called "Mambo Sudani" was a big hit in Egypt in the 50's, sung by Sudanese vocalist Sayyid Khalifah (Thanks to Ali for reminding me of the singer's name). As for Iraq, Elizabeth Fernea reports on a visit she and her anthropologist husban Bob made to a shaykh living near Diwaniya in 1956 or 1957, in her book Guests of the Sheik. One of the ways that the shaykh entertained them was by playing "Mambo Italiano" (a hit for Rosemary Clooney in 1954, for Dean Martin in 1955) over and over on his record player. So is it remarkable that people are listening to the Puerto Rican Daddy Yankee in Irbil in 2006, when media is much more globalized than in 1956?

As for his claim that the video for "Gasolina" is "near-pornographic," it is clear that Ackerman has never watched any rap videos, which today virtually always feature scantily clad girls shaking their booty. "Gasolina" is pretty mild compared to some. (And reggaetón is essentially "rap en español.")

Are the Kurds dreaming of all the "gasolina" they will gain control over, if they achieve their dream, and take over Kirkuk?

Friday, March 24, 2006

Chris McGreal in The Guardian (today) reports on a poll of Israeli Jews towards Israel's Arab (i.e., Palestinian citizens), conducted by respected pollster Geocartographia, on behalf of the Center for the Struggle Against Racism. Here are some of the results.

*Over two-thirds of Jews would refuse to live in the same building as an Arab.

*Nearly half would not allow an Arab in their home.

*41% want segregation of entertainment facilities.

*40% believe that "the state needs to support the emigration of Arab citizens." [McGreat notes that this is in the platform of some far-right Israeli parties participating in next week's general election. This policy is known in Israel as "transfer. This is a polite way of saying ethnic cleansing.]

*63% consider their country's Arab citizens a "security and demographic threat to the state".

*18% said they felt hatred when they heard someone speaking Arabic. [This number is probably rather low because over 50% of Israeli Jews are "Eastern" or Mizrahi, mostly from Arab countries. For many Israeli Jews, Arabic is a mother tongue.]

*34% agreed with the statement that "Arab culture is inferior to Israeli culture". [Again, "Arab culture" is the culture of many Israeli Jews.]

Taleb el-Sana, a Palestinian-Israeli member of parliament, observed that polls showing "anti-Semitism in other countries are greeted in Israel with a frenzy of denunciations." "Yet when it happens at their home," said el-Sana, they're quiet, and that's why this is a two-fold failure - they are racist, and they're also not attempting to address their own racism."

McGeal also reports that, "The Yisrael Beiteinu party advocates redrawing the border to place about 500,000 Arab-Israelis inside a Palestinian state. Yisrael Beiteinu is expected to win about 10 seats in the 120-seat parliament, meaning it could hold the balance of power."

Israel: "beacon to the nations"? (Deuteronomy 4:5-9)

P.S. Of course these things can never be discussed by the mainstream US media or in polite society. To make any connections between Zionism and racism will only incite charges of anti-Semitism.

The cover article, by Soraya Roberts, is here. You have to sign up to read the entire article, it's a bit of a tedious process, but free.

Here are a few of the interesting bits:

"[I]n the political climate of the 21st century Arab world, Ajram is the new face – and body – of social progress. The most famous pop star in the Middle East has taken subversion out of the newsroom and onto MTV. Whether she admits it or not, her bare midriff and swivelling hips are ushering in a new era of liberalism in the Middle East, much to the chagrin of traditionalists." (Soraya sounds a lot like Abu Aardvark here.)

"This scantily-clad femme fatale [overstated!] who has chosen to go under the knife three times (all before her mid-20s) is the ruler of her own destiny. In all of her videos, Ajram is in the position of power, with men either in the background or shown in a sexually ambiguous light."

"Nor is Ajram apologetic about prioritising her physical appearance. ‘Surgery for me is something very natural; I’m not embarrassed about it,’ she says. When it comes to plastic surgery, Ajram opts to avoid hypocrisy, considering that Lebanon has a well-recorded tradition for extensive nipping and tucking." [Sources tell me plastic surgery for women is at least as epidemic in Lebanon as in the US. Maybe more so.]

"Her aquiline nose and aquamarine eyes are splashed across billboards in her hometown (including a five-storey billboard, which is one of the biggest advertising constructions nationwide) in an advertising deal that reportedly earned her US$2 million. Advertising commitments, coupled with her massive Coca-Cola deal (which made her the face of America’s most recognisable brand) have secured her position as the highest-paid female singer in the Arab world."

"Ajram has been able to flourish in the Arab landscape thanks to the advent of music videos. A cascade of music channels flooded Arab television, from Rotana, also a successful music label, to ART, Future TV, Nagham (Arabic MTV) and LBC, which were all accessible via satellite TV, broadcasting micro mini-wearing musical sirens 24 hours a day."

"Ajram became the object of every Arab male’s fantasy following her video for ‘Akhasmak Ah’ (translated as ‘We Might Disagree’) in which she plays a café proprietor whose vocal pyrotechnics and body gyrations drive her male customers into hysteria. The video caused uproar, not unlike Egyptian films of the ’50s (to which its style has often been compared)..."

"Last year the mayor of Marrakech announced that Ajram could no longer hold concerts in the city to avoid a recurrence of the incidents surrounding her performance in April 2005 (where she performed to 100,000 people), which included ‘sexual harassment, theft [and] excessive alcohol consumption resulting in violence and people fainting.’ Prior to this incident, in 2003, airing of the ‘Akhasmak Aah’ video was banned by the Egyptian parliament for indecency. In the same year, a riot broke out outside a Bahraini concert when radical Islamists attacked Ajram’s fans – with religious leaders defending the violence claiming they were opposing ‘immorality’...In October 2003, Bahrain’s parliament refused to ban Ajram from performing in the city."

"Many of her male fans adore Ajram because she projects the image of the submissive girl next door. Ajram still lives with her family (‘how did you know that?’ she asks, slightly embarrassed) and laughs at rumours about her love life." ["Girl next door" was the ideal Playboy centerfold, at least in the magazine's early decades.]

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Delta 5 were a great and important and very left-wing & feminist post-punk band from Leeds. I've read a lot about them but was only familiar with their song "Mind Your Own Business" as covered by Chicks on Speed, on the album Will Save Us All!Kill Rock Stars recently released a compilation with three of their singles, plus some BBC and live sessions, from 1979-1981. Now I can finally hear the great Delta 5 that previously I just read about.

It's drummer Kelvin Knight (far right) who is wearing the kufiya. Knight once spent time as the drummer for Gang of Four, also from Leeds, to whom Delta 5 bear a sonic resemblance. Delta 5 also ran in the same circles as another great Leeds post-punk band, The Mekons. In the liner notes to this compilation, Jon Langford of the Mekons (and Waco Brothers and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts) says that the personnel of the Mekons and Gang of Four and Delta 5 were all originally very loosely related and put together bands with names like Mekon Delta 4. I love this, whether it's true or not: it combines the Mekons and Gang of 4 name with Delta, and is (is this too obvious?) a pun on Mekong Delta.

Kufiyas were a very common accessory in leftwing Brit circles at the time.

[Note added November 23, 2012: See the comment below, which clarifies that Kelvin Knight, the kufiya wearer in the photo, was from York, not Leeds, and that he played drums on two classics from The Jermz: "Me and My Baby" and "Power Cut." And he also drummed for The Jerks, another Leeds band that pre-dated Delta 5.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

"1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World": an exibit touring England. Go here for a full description; for the short version, an article in The Independent. Among the contributions named by The Independent: coffee, the bank check, distillation, inoculation, the fountain pen, shampoo, the Camera Obscura, modern surgical instruments, the windmill, the three-course meal, the crank-shaft, quilting, and the garden as a site of meditation. And much more. I found this at The Angry Arab News Service.

(Please read: you are not allowed to learn this in school. Otherwise we might regard Muslims and Arabs as something other than primitives, fanatics, and terrorists.)

Crazy fashion spread featuring Devendra Banhart & his group (Hairy Fairy) in today's New York Times Spring Men's Fashion magazine. With an article by Daphne Merkin called "Gender Trouble" which, of course, cites Judith Butler's book of the same title.

What the spread reminded me was of all those lucious, quasi-Orientalist tableaux in Jack Smith's underground film Flaming Creatures (1963), one of my favorite films of all time. (Last spring I organized a film series for the Gender Studies program at U of A called "Flaming Creatures," which featured the Smith film.) I've put up one image (it's the one on the right), but go see the film.

And go see Devendra Banhart perform on March 20 on a bill with Peaches and Steve Earle, at a benefit to raise funds to fight the US occupation of Iraq.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Since I know Vera Tamari and admire her work, which is being exhibited at The Bridge in NYC at the Palestinian art exhibit (see below), I thought I'd post a photo of what she's showing. The work is called Tale of a Tree (ceramics and phototransfer on plexiglass.) And here is a description, from the exhibit website:

Vera Tamari's iconic installation refers to the hundreds of olive trees that have been destroyed. Not only an essential food staple, the olive is also a medicine, a cosmetic, and a symbol for the attachment of Palestinians to the land. The wanton destruction of hundreds of these ancient trees by settlers and military forces is one of the many great tragedies of the occupation of Palestine.

“Vera Tamari pays tribute to the olive trees, a persistent theme in her work, now a dreamy vision in myriad shades of pastel blue, pink, purple and ochre yellow: The olive tree, green and solid, giving birth to coloured miniatures in itself, tired of its ancient form and of its constant symbol, breaks norms and transcends tradition, bursting into a dazzling rainbow for the future." – Tania Tamari Nasir (March 2000)

MADE IN PALESTINE, which is (apparently) the first exhibition of contemporary Palestinian art in the US, opens in New York City from March 14-April 22, 2006. It features such well-known Palestinian artists as Taysir Barakat, Suleiman Mansour, Vera Tamari and Emily Jacir. Check out the website here, it has short bios on the artists, examples of the artwork, and much more.

The exhibit is at The Bridge, 521 W. 26th St., 3rd Floor. The opening features artists Samia Halaby and Zuhdi al-Adawi plus music, food and wine.

I hope the curators have invited New York Senator Hilary Clinton to the opening.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Marisa Meltzer & Julianne Shepherd have an article in the latest issue (March) of Spin dealing with French rap and the 2005 riots. (Sorry, it's not available on-line.)

They make the point (which hawblawg made earlier here and here) that "French rappers had been vocal about the banlieues for years." The first to "potently address the problems in the banlieues," was the group Suprême NTM. (See Paul Silverstein and Chantal Tetreault's article in Middle East Report Online, "Urban Violence in France," which opens with some potent NTM lyrics.)

Besides making that rather (to me) obvious observation, the article does an overview of the history and present of French rap that I found useful because I've gotten quite out of touch with the scene. Here are some of the main points:

1. France is the second-largest of consumer of hip-hop in the world, after the US. Hip-hop style is arguably as ubiquitous in France as it is in the US. As in the US, the culture of the youth of the social and economic margins has conquered the cultural "center."

2. Lyrics are given the most weight in French rap. (That is, they are privileged over beats or flow or sound of the mix.) According to Meltzer & Shepherd, this puts them in the tradition of Edith Piaf, Serge Gainsbourg and Charles Aznavour. French intellectual supporters in particular are prone to making such claims, as for instance critic Thomas Ravier, writing in the literary magazine La Nouvelle Revue Française, who compared rapper Booba (pictured above) with Céline and Proust. (Such pronouncements have been common ever since rap appeared on the French scene in the late '80s; see the article I co-authored with Joan Gross & David McMurray, "Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Rai, Rap and Franco-Maghrebi Identities" in Lavie & Swedenburg, Displacement, Diaspora and Geographies of Identity, for some examples [p. 144, p. 154 f.n. 44].)

3. In the French census, immigrants and anyone under 18 born to immigrant parents is counted as a "foreigner." Hence the anti-foreigner rhetoric that was so prevalent from the French media during the October riots. (If I'm not mistaken, the children of immigrants can choose to take French citizenship at age 18.)

4. French rappers to listen for (besides the old school of NTM, IAM, Arsenik, Fonky Family, Saïan Super Crew, and Ministère A.M.E.R.) are:

5. Given the relative absence of ethnic minorities in the government or the media, and the lack of any strong locally-based leadership, the only real "public" representatives of the youth of the banlieues are the rappers.

In sum: the problems of racialized minority youth in the banlieues are awful. Rappers who vocalize these problems are huge in the domain of French pop culture. No effective political force exists to mobilize around the issues of the banlieues, and so, rappers are the only effective voices.

One important issue that the article fails to address adequately is the strong Arab and Muslim (Arab and African) character of the banlieues. Chill, also known as Akhenaton, one of the two lead vocalists in IAM, is quoted several times, but never identified as a Muslim (the son of Italian immigrants, he is a convert.)

The article appears in the wake of a recent book review in The Nation by the inciteful critic Greg Tate. In his review of three new volumes on hip-hop, plus one on the Black Arts Movement, Tate assesses the demise of hip-hop's political promise, its rapid move from "folk culture to commercial subculture to global youth culture to global capitalist marketing tool." What once was "considered mad-scary, dangerous and actionable by Congress and national law-enforcement agencies, has turned to dust--or, more accurately, the fool's gold of nouveau bling fortunes."

Tate goes on, "What's often forgotten is that hip-hop used the evil empire of the industry to further its own ends--subverting the mechanisms and formulas of pop to forge platinum hits with litte or no airplay, music video or promotion...But hip-hop also paid a price for the ticket of inclusion. By making a devil's bargain with hyper-capitalism, hip-hop lost not only its freedom of speech but its powers of speech..."

And, "Most of the hip-hop audience barely (if ever) experienced it as a radicalizing political force, and for new listeners it's merely another Internet menu item."

What I think Tate partially misses is that our political hopes (in the days when "conscious" rap acts like Public Enemy and KRS One were pre-eminent) for hip-hop were not realized because, like in France, rap artists vocalized sentiments in the absence of effective voices from grass-roots political leaders. Hip-hop, I believe, can be a powerful ally or energizer of progressive political movements, but when artists are the only voice, or the loudest voice...turning to dust, or fool's gold, is a likely outcome.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Morrissey (as you all know, the former lead singer of the Smiths, a solo artist since 1987), reports that he has been interviewed by both the FBI and British intelligence over his opposition to the war in Iraq. Morrissey has called Bush a "terrorist." Says Morrissey about the role of music and politics:

I don't belong to any political groups, I don't really say anything unless I'm asked directly and I don't even demonstrate in public. I always assume that so-called authoritarian figures just assume that pop/rock music is slightly insane and an untouchable platform for the working classes to stand up and say something noticeable.

Let's see, if we add Morrissey to the artists listed below, who are performing at the anti-war benefit at the Hammersmith, what do we notice?

Two of my all-time favorite artists, Peaches and Steve Earle. I really wish I could make it to the VIP lounge to drink vodka with Cindy and Peaches. I'm also very fond of Fischerspooner, although their second album was a disappointment compared to the amazing first release.

I will be giving a paper about Peaches (who I've met a couple times) at the annual meetings of the Canadian Anthropological Society (CASCA) in Montreal, on May 10. The title is "'Back It Up, Baby': Peaches Queers Straight Sex." I reviewed a 2001 Steve Earle concert in Fayetteville for PopMatters that you can read here. As for Bright Eyes, you can read about his blast against Bush on the Tonight Show here.

NAAP-NY in conjunction with the N.O.M.A.D.S. & the Philistines present...

Free the P Hip-Hop Slam & Party

Proceeds will benefit NAAP-NY community initiatives and Slingshot Hip-Hop, a documentary film that focuses on the daily life of Palestinian rappers living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel. It aims to spotlight alternative voices of resistance within the Palestinian struggle and explore the role their music plays within their social, political and personal lives.

About Me

Professor of Anthropology, University of Arkansas. Author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past. Co-editor of Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture and of Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity.